


Family Business

by ilien



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, Gen, kitten!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-19
Updated: 2012-06-19
Packaged: 2017-11-08 03:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/438402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilien/pseuds/ilien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So when Emmanuel said “We have to get a cat,” she smiled and said “Yes, dear.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Business

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The story is Gen. It has no slash or het interactions whatsoever, but I marked it as such because someone, who really wants to see it, will probably see, and get triggered.
> 
> 2\. I was, just like always, lurking comments for some fics, and someone mentioned this prompt about Cas adopting kittens. I have no idea what they were talking about (I’ve never seen that prompt to begin with), but it just wouldn’t leave me alone. Sorry for stealing the prompt.

Daphne never really cared for pets. Sure, when she was a child she had a puppy and adored him, as any child would, but as an adult she didn’t see a point in making your life difficult with litter boxes, fur, chewed shoes, dog food and vets just to get yourself a family member you’ll get attached to just to bury them in another ten or fifteen years. It’s sad. 

But despite all of that, she knew why other people kept cats, dogs and hamsters – and, certainly, could understand them. So when Emmanuel said “We have to get a cat,” she smiled and said “Yes, dear.”

Someone apparently told the guy that every family should have a cat. He had a fake name, and a fake family, and no memories of what he really was. She couldn’t give him a real name – only her own last name, couldn’t give him a real family – only that fake wedding they used to legalize his documents. Least she could do was let him have a real cat. So, she gave him the number of a local animal shelter. 

Three days later he came home with two tiny kittens. “They are brothers, Daphne,” he said with his usual seriousness, “Their mother died in the fire last week. I could not let them be separated.” The fire in question was a topic for town gossip for days: what’s better than a real fire with a huge insurance claim and no human victims?

Both kittens were remarkably tiny, had blue eyes (almost the same color as Emmanuel’s own, she noticed, amused) and were unimaginably cute. One of them was a little smaller, had dark grey fur and very whiney voice whenever he wanted anything. The other one was grey and white, and, compared to his brother, was remarkably quiet.

Emmanuel called the smaller one Sam, and the bigger one Dean. 

If she were a psychiatrist, she’d probably try to make something out of these names: they’d never met a Sam (let alone a Dean), so it was safe to assume that Emmanuel had probably taken the names out of his own subconscious mind that was, no doubt, somehow connected to his forgotten past life. Daphne, however, was not a psychiatrist, and it’s not like you could come to a shrink and say “Hey, here’s this fake husband of mine that has amnesia and can heal people with the power of mind,” so she let it be. 

Turned out, the kittens were too small to eat kitten food. Also, it turned out that there is no kitten baby formula. So, Emmanuel picked several boxes of regular baby formula in a local store. There was enough formula to feed, maybe, fifty kittens – but he insisted that they might not like some of it, so he had to provide a choice.

And he really, seriously fed the kittens every hour for the next three weeks. With freshly warmed formula, using a sterile eyedropper. It was so completely adorable that if Daphne ever had any regrets about marrying this man that would put an end to them. When Sam and Dean were old enough to eat regular food, she was almost sorry she’d never see her husband mothering a pair of kittens again.

***  
The story with multiple selection of food repeated itself – he, probably, bought all kitten food in every store in ten miles radius. In the end they found out that while Dean wasn’t very picky as long as the food contained meat, Sam preferred one particular kind of food with “extra vegetables”, and got very, very whiney whenever it ran out. 

He also got whiney when the litter box wasn’t clean enough. When the TV was too loud. When the sun was too bright, or the rain was too heavy. When Dean occupied his favorite sofa corner. And when he was just, generally, in a bad mood. 

Dean was quiet. He didn’t complain about the TV, the sun or even the food, though Emmanuel insisted that the kitten “made a face” when his food was “not satisfactory,” whatever that means. Dean also didn’t have a favorite spot on the sofa – he preferred to sleep on Emmanuel’s pillow. 

When “the boys”, as her husband started calling them at some point, were several months old, she suddenly noticed that their eyes went green. She told Emmanuel, and he said “Of course,” as if it was something to be expected. Then she noticed that Sam was now bigger than his brother – perhaps, because of all those extra vegetables. Emmanuel, however, still insisted that Dean was the oldest, though they never had any evidence of which of them was older – for all they knew, Sam and Dean were twins. To prove his point of Dean being the elder brother, Emmanuel would tell her stories of how Dean always left some food for Sam, went all protective when Emmanuel took the kittens to the vet, and how Dean looked guilty when Sam peed on the carpet, as if it was somehow his fault, too. Daphne could never tell when a cat looks “guilty” and was not there to witness the other events, neither she see anything big-brotherly in Deans stealing Sam’s toys and occupying his sofa place for no specific reason.

***  
Sometimes, when Emmanuel was not on his “business trips” to heal someone, she would walk in on the three of them in the living room. Sam would be curled up on her husband’s lap, fast asleep and, somehow, purring in his sleep – and Dean would sit next to them on the sofa, looking absolutely unimpressed by Emmanuel’s attempts to scratch his ears. That was the only moments she saw a hint of genuine smile on this man’s face. She did feel a bit left out at moments like that, but still she wished, sometimes, for them to be a real family.

She knew, however, that getting too attached to this little fake family would be the wrong thing to do: someday Emmanuel would probably disappear just as mysteriously as he came into her life. It was not her place to question God’s ways. She only wondered if he would take the boys with him when he goes.


End file.
